


A Professor's Dream

by sometimesmyhandswork (maybewibble)



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-02 20:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10952070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybewibble/pseuds/sometimesmyhandswork
Summary: A witcher is employed to protect a professor suffering from omen-filled dreams.





	A Professor's Dream

**Author's Note:**

> This work contains references to rape, but no descriptions of it. This work does contain racist and sexist characters.

She shut the door behind her, blocking the through-draft and causing an intentionally loud "click." The professor still didn't look up. She had walked with heavy feet up the stairs, and even jingled her scabbard on the stones twice. Being noisy no longer came naturally to her, but it helped put clients at their ease. Usually. The professor still didn't look up, his quill moving slowly and deliberately over the page. Three books lay open on the table in front of him. Two of them were in what looked to be Behric; consonant-vowel units flowing along a central calligraphic line. The third was Stockton's "Spirits of ve Water." She recognised the illustration; it was titled "A Beautiful Naiad" and showed what was, in her professional estimation, something far closer to a siren. It had been shown to her in her training as a warning of illustrators caring more about nudity than accuracy.

The professor finished the paragraph they had been writing before looking up. "You aren't the maid." _I'm wearing leather armour and carrying two swords,_ she thought. _How astute._ "I'm the witcher. The university hired me." His gaze didn't lift to hers as she talked, but lingered around her hips.

"What?"

"The witcher."

"Oh! I thought they were getting some sort of monster-hunter?"

"Yes. That's who I am." _We were taught to be patient with clients. I often wonder why._

His gaze finally took in the second sword over the witcher's shoulder. "Very well. I have been having dreams. Disturbing dreams. I had put them down to the intense and vital nature of my work. I mentioned them to my esteemed colleague because they have been getting stronger. Mmmmm...more intense. Darker."

"Tell me what happens in the dreams."

"What?"

"In the dreams. What happens."

"Oh! Well, hmmm. The dreams start with me staring at my reflection in a pool. I can see my reflection, and the stars and the moon too. But I'm in a cave. It's damp. Moist. And I'm lying down, looking at stars that exist only in the reflection. Then her face appears. My muse." He glances at the drawing of the naiad on his desk. "I look up, and see her. My muse. She's beautiful. So young and slender. "  
He smiled at the witcher. It was a pitying smile. He wasn't aware that she was far older than she looked, just cared that she looked old. "  
Great, pale eyes that capture me. Inspire me. The dream used to stop there. And I would wake up and write." The professor gestured to the loose paper on the desk. "Heroes Of The Behric. I thought, when I was sent here, that I would just find a bunch of primitives, but your myths do have some merit."

"I'm not from Behra."

"Oh, you're not?"

"No. You said you were sent here?"

The professor twisted a little in his seat. "Sabbatical. It's not important."

Not important. I paused, remembering the memorial I had passed on entering the university grounds. "Back to the dream, then. You said it used to stop when you saw your... muse. What happens now?"

"Well, she's there, and she starts off beautiful. But her eyes make me think of the storm I met on the boat here. Then she opens her mouth and her teeth are small and pointed. She's fierce. No longer beautiful. She's angry. I step back and slip on the wet rock, tumbling forward. The last thing I see is the full moon in the pool. Then I wake up. "

This time the witcher glanced at the drawing of the naiad. The illustrator had drawn them as pouting, their teeth hidden. She wondered whether the illustrator had known about the pointed teeth. They had clearly known about breasts. Then she looked about the room.

"May I?" She gestured to the window.

"Hmm? What?"

"May I inspect the window?"

"Whatever for?"

"I wish to gather evidence or lack thereof of monsters."

"Yes, well, I don't see why not." She suspected that was as close to explicit permission as she was going to get. It wasn't a large town, but there was still soot on the windowsill. On parts of the windowsill. The rest had been disturbed. Something wet, and bigger than a small child, smaller than a grown man had sat here. She wrinkled her nose as she leaned over and looking down to the river below. It would be easy enough to climb, provided you could swim to the base of the wall.

"Will you be long?" The professor had already turned their back and was rereading a loose sheet. "I have a pupil arriving soon."

"You take private pupils?"

"Some of the more self-important members of this community want their daughters educated as well as their sons. I don't approve, but they do pay me." The witcher looked back at the window. There wasn't a latch. They turned their head to the door. _I can hear the pupil coming up the stairs. They are hesitating._

"I'll be leaving soon." The witcher looked around the room again. A bed, a desk and some stacks of books. Not the accoutrements of a distinguished professor. She waited until the pupil knocked on the door, and opened it for them.

"Oh!" The pupil was startled, unused to not being made to wait. "Come in, come in." Said the professor, trying to make space on their desk. "This woman was just leaving."

The witcher took stock of the pupil. She was beautiful, but old enough that the witcher wasn't too concerned. She spotted a fold in the dress that hung like it had been weighted. A dagger. Beautiful and sensible. No, the witcher didn't need to worry for this pupil. She made her way downstairs.

\---

It was a humid night. No wind disturbed the whisp of incense smoke as it curled from the memorial to the heavens. The witcher sat watching the smoke, watching the entrance to the professor's tower. Watching the full moon rise above it. There was a sketch of the deceased on the table. Died during childbirth the maid had said, and then they had spat towards the professor's tower. The sketch showed a young girl. One of the maids. She'd grown up in this little university. She couldn't have been more than fourteen.

Now she was a memory. Some incense, a bell, a sketch, and a necklace of little shells. The witcher looked back at the necklace. She had seen something similar before; tokens of thanks from the sea. She did her best to listen in on the professor's lesson. She thought on the dagger hidden in the pupil's pocket. She didn't want to have to interfere. Not tonight. An hour passed and the pupil came down the stairs. The witcher watched her from the shadowed cloisters. Heard the professor bolt the door upstairs. The pupil was a little shaken, but no greater harm than that. Yet still harm.

The witcher watched her leave, then watched the moon. An hour later, two at most and she heard what she was waiting for. A cry, quickly muffled. Then a splash. She wondered whether anyone would admit to having heard it. She wondered how many people had been hoping to hear it.

Minutes passed and wet footsteps came towards her. Footsteps coming up the steps from the jetty. The witcher stayed where she was, standing in front of the memorial. The footsteps came closer, until whoever it was stood beside her. The witcher kept her eyes on the drawing.

"Sshe was kin.d to us. A frrien.d." The language was familiar to it. Speaking wasn't. The witcher nodded, the smell of the river filling her nostrils.

"Ye.t he neverr rrepen.te.d. We wa.tched. We hope.d." An arm, glistening and beautiful in the moonlight reached out and retrieved the necklace from the table. "We fail.d in our favourr." They stood for a while, and then the remembrance bell was rung gently. Rung once. The naiad left, then, back down the steps to the river.

\---

The witcher waited until dawn before approaching the dean. Together they went and banged on the professor's door. There was no answer. As the witcher was leaving she passed the memorial table. She looked again at the sketch, the bell and the incense. She pondered whether she should have taken her fee. She hadn't had to do anything. Then again, and more importantly, the monster was dead.


End file.
